'Robust hope' was recently championed as fundamental to achieving educational utopias. Hope feels good and has utility in some circumstances. However, in other situations different motivations - positive (e.g. curiosity) or negative (e.g. frustration) - may offer greater pedagogical value. Robust hope may lead to: (1) failure; (2) an exacerbation of existing judgement biases; and (3) emotional reasoning. Hence, best-practice principles require that the net pedagogical impact of robust hope be assessed.